King Tides will return to Charleston in the coming days, so citizens are encouraged to be aware of local weather conditions and the possibility of flooding.

Rainfall is also forecasted this week, increasing the chances of flooded roadways in certain low-lying areas.
 
As little as 12 inches of rushing water can carry a small car away, so remember: “Turn Around Don’t Drown.”
 
High tides periods to be particularly aware of while traveling are:

• Wednesday, May 24, at 7:40 p.m.
• Thursday, May 25, at 8:34 p.m.
• Friday, May 26, at 9:26 p.m.
• Saturday, May 27, at 10:23 p.m., and
• Sunday, May 28, at 11:19 p.m.

Amendments to BAR regulations affecting the Old and Historic District will be considered at  special meeting of the Planning Commission at 5:00 p.m., on Thursday, May 25, 2017 in the Burke High School Auditorium, 244 President Street.  Amendments generally address the authority of the BAR to consider height, mass and scale of new construction and codify certain policy statements for the BAR’s use in evaluating applications.

The subject of Short-Term Rentals (STRs) has been discussed at CNA membership meetings and a number of articles have appeared in the local newspapers.  The City formed a STR Task Force to examine this complex phenomenon spreading rapidly through U.S. cities, including Charleston.

CNA has expressed concerns to the City about certain aspects of the proposed height district regulations in our neighborhood. Of particular concern to Charlestowne are the proposed 3 1/2 story height districts on Lenwood and Rutledge, which exceed the currently built conditions of those streets. Adjacent streets are limited to 2 1/2 stories, while the bulk of Charlestowne is slated for 3 stories. The City has not yet offered CNA a rationale for allowing extra height on those residential streets. CNA is also concerned that the proposed regulations would allow the BAR to grant an additional 1/2 story throughout our neighborhood if it finds “architectural merit.”  
Please visit www.charleston-sc.gov/heightchanges for the proposed height map and additional information.

Members unable to attend the public hearings may submit comments by email to heightchanges@charleston-sc.gov or by letter to City of Charleston Planning Dept, 2 George Street, Suite 3100, Charleston SC 29401.

Click to view article in the Post and Courier: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/what-are-all-those-purple-signs-posted-around-downtown-charleston/article_f9cb3a68-3b0a-11e7-8586-6bca3a0262b6.html

CHS |  In the company of strangers

There’s an undercurrent moving through town.  It’s a sentiment of frustration turned to sadness, a sense of resignation.  You may have noticed an undertone, even among some Charleston’s stalwarts, that they no longer view the Holy City as their forever home.

Five years ago that would have been unthinkable.

“When I walk down King Street, I seldom see people I know.  I used to see friends, neighbors…now there are only tourists and strangers,” a local hotelier lamented.  He is not alone.

Many local businesses and old friends have left the street.  Morris Sokol, Bob Ellis, Rapport, Tellis Pharmacy, Sylvan Gallery, Dixie Furniture, Kerrison’s Jewelers, Charleston Paints, A. Fairfax Antiques, Sermet’s, Hughes Lumber, Il Cortile Del Re, and many others have shuttered.

In this challenging retail environment, stores come and go, but Charleston’s loss of longtime established stores is exceptional, and many attribute this profound transformation to a combination of high rents and exploding property values that make it difficult for local businesses to continue and easy for them to sell.

The influx of new hotels is also to blame for our sense of isolation.  For the most part, hotels are not places locals visit except for special occasions.  Hotels aren’t shops where people can browse and relax, or places where locals buy things for themselves or their homes, or restaurants where they meet and dine with friends.  Hotels may be in the city, but they are seldom a part of the city.  Hotels are buildings of strangers, often built by strangers.

And there are a lot of hotels

The best estimate is that there are some 6,500 hotel rooms on the peninsula that are open and running, under construction, or in planning and development.  That number doesn’t begin to tell the whole story.

There are 222 hotels with 19,405 rooms in the larger “Charleston market,” which includes rooms off the peninsula, operating, under construction or in planning, according to Smith Travel Research’s STAR Report.  That also includes 3,185 of what some might term “hidden rooms” that are invisible because they’re still in various stages of planning and development.  Soon enough, you’ll see them.

For a market of Charleston’s size, 222 hotels with 19,405 rooms is a lot.  And while not all these “guests” will come onto the peninsula, a lot of them will.

Have we passed the tipping point?  One hotelier says “yes, but Charleston is a hot market right now that investors just want to be here.  Some are playing with foundation and pension fund money, it’s not theirs,” our source says, adding, “Some of these new hotels will cost $400,000 to $500,000 a key to build,” because property here is so expensive, “and that’s not sustainable.”

“It’s also a cyclical business,” he added as a warning, “there are no long term leases renting rooms, and this business is greatly impacted by the state of the economy.”  And, as a resident, he adds his primary concern: “What’s been lost is the balance between tourism and the local economy.  For every new hotel that goes up, an office building, apartments, grocery store, hardware store or other local business is sacrificed.  And so is more of the character of Charleston.”

And if that’s not enough, there’s another factor aggravating the growing tourist issue and diminishing the character of Charleston: STR’s, or short-term rentals.

Airbnb and VRBO are just two of the online websites individuals can use to list and rent an extra bedroom or an entire house.  Because of the havoc unregulated rentals can create, STR’s are illegal in most of Charleston, but that hasn’t stopped them from proliferating.

Short-term rental problems can be immediate and severe.  Renters gobble up resident parking spaces, can come and go at all hours, and often create an intensity of use that’s incompatible with single-family residential neighbors.  Some landlords have converted apartments into short-term rental spaces, displacing service workers, medical students and others, further eroding the affordable housing market.

The number of rooms posted online is difficult to determine, but there’s no shortage of listings:  “Prime Charleston Downtown,” “Luxurious Condo in Downtown Historic District,” and “5 Bedroom home in historic Harleston Village area, sleeps 12 very comfortably.”  This last listing brings new meaning to “friends and family.”  These clusters of ever-arriving, ever changing renters will be complete strangers, not neighbors with a concern for the neighborhood.

Are there any solutions?

 In an article titled “What Happens When a Destination Becomes too Popular,” Conde¢ Nast Traveler, the same magazine that keeps giving Charleston awards it doesn’t need, admitted the problem with tourism.  Early on, revenue from more adventurous travelers can boost local economies, but then tourism changes the infrastructure of the destination, homogenizes it with chain stores and souvenir shops, and that changes the type of travelers who visit, stresses the destination’s resources and causes a decline.

Amsterdam, like Barcelona, is taking action against the worldwide tourism explosion, and has limited development of both hotels and short-term rentals in the city center.  Similar action is urgently needed in Charleston, yet over the past 15 months, the Planning Commission and City Council combined have blocked five separate attempts to limit hotel development.

“I do believe that our city is nearing the tipping point on the number of hotels on our peninsula…and our own numerical analysis shows that we are becoming more like tourist dominated cities and less like balanced cities in terms of rooms per resident,” City Planner Jacob Lindsey acknowledged.

The City will return to the Planning Commission soon with a new proposal to limit hotel development.  Concurrently, the City’s STR Task Force is looking at options to control short-term rentals and may recommend specific changes as early as June.

But these attempts have failed previously.  What will make it different this time?

Only three actions will save this city:

1)  Preservation organizations and neighborhood associations must join together and coordinate their efforts all over Charleston, including West Ashley.  Charleston needs to stop overdevelopment, and West Ashley needs an infusion of responsible mixed-use development.  Working together is the only way both can happen.

2)  All city council members must be far more responsive to the peninsula’s quality of life.  West Ashley’s suburban investment potential is doomed if the core peninsula is degraded.

3)  Every resident must take action.  Call, email, and write the mayor and every member of the planning commission and city council, not just your own representative.  Tell them you want strict limits on all new hotels and enforcement of the short-term rental ban.  Follow up with them; your opinion counts.

“Our city is unique in the demand placed upon it because of its incredibly high profile in combination with the incredibly small area of the peninsula,” Jacob Lindsey said.  “That makes us feel it’s important to update our accommodation regulations.”

Lindsey concluded, “There’s a critical quality of life issue for our city that has to be addressed.  Smart tourism regulation is something we have to do.”

Now it’s up to us, all of us.

#  #   #

Jay Williams Jr.

[CHS | A Blog About Charleston.  Please share with friends.  To subscribe/unsubscribe, write your preference in the subject line and reply.  Comments are always welcome and, if published, will be posted anonymously.  The opinions expressed here are mine.]

Also published as “The Advocate” on page 2 of the current issue of The Charleston Mercury.

CHS  |   Finally, A Start on a Much-Needed Transportation Plan

Constantly stuck in traffic? Dread even getting in your car?  Longing for the good old days when you could easily drive somewhere and also find a parking space?

Those days are gone.

The just-released INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard found that Charleston drivers spent 20 peak hours in congestion last year.  Although our metro ranked 75^th in population, we jumped to 59^th in the amount of traffic among 240 U.S. cities.  Could those 5.3 million visitors be a part of the problem?

Even if they weren’t, consider this more frightening statistic from the 2014 i-26ALT Study: Charleston’s Tri-county population will grow 48% and employment will increase 55% between 2010 to 2040!  Double the people, more than double the cars.

The good news is that you’re not alone out there!

The bad news is that the mayor and city council transferred $350,000 earmarked for a peninsula traffic study to fund West Ashley’s “Master Plan.”  That makes sense only if the folks living in West Ashley don’t ever want to drive downtown.

“We have a transportation problem.”

City Councilman Mike Seekings, chair of the Traffic and Transportation committee and Chair of the CARTA board, aptly noted, “We have a transportation problem, and in the history of the region, we’ve never had a mass transit project.”

In 1929, when the Peninsula population was double the 30,000 of today, over 15 million people rode the City’s trolleys and ferries.  Sadly those tracks were paved over or ripped out as Charleston become car-dependent.  Almost 90 years later, we know that car dependency hasn’t worked out that well.  Going forward, it can’t possibly work.

There’s hope.  One regional transportation plan is taking shape.  In 2014, the i-26ALT study looked at 20 different ways to bring people into the City from Summerville, alternatives that included commuter rail, bus rapid transit, light rail and more.  But after that 15-month analysis was complete, and the best means and routes were debated and selected, the project languished.  There was no funding.

Dana Beach, Executive Director of the Coastal Conservation League, explained the breakthrough, “The first step was to create a bus rapid transit line (BRT) with a dedicated right of way connecting downtown Charleston with Summerville and Goose Creek.  The Council of Government’s BRT study provided a solid analysis that provides a clear path forward.  And now, the new ½ cent sales tax offers the local funding necessary for the system and that will leverage state and federal funds to cover all of the capital costs.”  Federal funds could provide up to 80% of the cost.

With regularity, I-26 is gridlocked at the I-526 interchange. Yet traffic on this corridor will continue to swell as raw land is developed and population increases, as Charleston home prices and rental rates rise, and as more workers, forced to live farther away from the City, try to get downtown.  “There are 40,000 hospitality workers in the Charleston area alone,” Seekings adds.

More cars aren’t a solution; there’s no room for them. Efficient public transportation, common in Europe and some of America’s larger cities, is the only solution in a city with high land values.

The i-26ALT Plan

The man instrumental in driving this new i-26ALT Plan, Mike Seekings, is in sync with Dana on the first step.  The new BRT line would travel from Summerville along route U.S. 76, link with U.S. 52, and then down Meeting Street to Line Street.  “This would be a fixed guideway,” Seekings says, meaning the sleek, articulated train-like busses would travel in their own designated lanes, unimpeded by traffic.  See the Blue Line on Map 1.  Click on Link:  http://bcdcog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/BRT-Map.png

Remarkably, it will only take an hour to travel this new, alternate 23-mile bus rapid transit route from Summerville to downtown Charleston, regardless of traffic.  There will be 18 stations along the way, including some park ‘n ride stops, transit hubs, and neighborhood stations.  During peak hours, the rapid transit “Blue Line” (let’s unofficially name it here) will run every 10 to 20 minutes.

Unless there’s another problem afoot, the “Blue Line” should be up and running in a few years!  But we have more to do.

Urban Planner Gabe Klein studied Charleston’s needs a few years ago.  Klein, who also presented a TED Talk entitled, “Cars almost killed our cities, but here’s how we can bring them back,” made specific recommendations:

“There’s an abandoned rail and associated railroad right of way…extending down from Mt. Pleasant Street down to Spring Street.”  This rail line, running roughly parallel to King Street behind the Hyatt and Post and Courier buildings, sometimes known as the Low Line, “could be purchased from Norfolk Southern…and the southern terminus is, ironically, a trolley museum.”

Gabe Klein’s transportation plan was visionary. (see Map 2 below).  He proposed a visitor center (black circle) with a parking garage near Mt. Pleasant Street, the spot where I-26, the “Blue Line” BRT, and the Low Line rail corridor all intersect.  Imagine a transportation hub away from the City to encourage commuters and tourists headed down I-26 to leave their cars and take the Low Line light rail or the “Blue Line” bus rapid transit!  As Map 2 shows, commuters and visitors could easily jump to the existing Meeting-King bus loop then on to other routes running East-West across the major corridors.

Dana Beach says that “the Low Line should be integrated into a larger strategy for the I-26 corridor.  It is possible, with proactive planning, to combine pedestrian, bicycle and transit functions along this route.  Such an initiative would be truly transformative – perhaps more than any other single investment we could make for the Tri-county region.  We cannot allow this opportunity to slip away.”

Councilmember Mike Seekings is equally determined, “We must do everything we can to acquire the Low Line right-of-way and ensure that it is preserved for our future transportation needs.”

#   #    #

Jay Williams Jr.

Map 2:  Black circle represents Gabe Klein’s proposed transportation-Welcome Center at approximately Mt. Pleasant Street.  Black line running South to just beyond Columbus Street is the route of the “Low Line” rail.  Other lines represent proposed connecting CARTA bus routes.

Phase A streetcar line would utilize the existing heavy-rail ROW from Mt Pleasant to Spring Street.

Phase B would likely be an extension and possibly a loop on Meeting or King Street down to the border of the historic District. If a one way loop is utilized, less right of way will be needed (even though it could operate in mixed tra c, and would likely use King and Meeting Streets from Spring Street (or maybe Columbus) to Broad Street.

Phase C would run on the boulevard system to the airport, likely in shared lanes, but they could be dedicated alternatively. These trains would run at 50+ mph and cut tra c dramatically from the airport to the city.

[CHS | A Blog About Charleston.  Please share with friends.  To subscribe/unsubscribe, write your preference in the subject line and reply.  Comments are always welcome and, if published, will be kept anonymous.  This blog reflects my opinion and not that of any other organization or individual.]

Also published as “The Advocate” on page 8 of the current issue of The Charleston Mercury.